Results tagged “yankeestadium”

Baseball season is done and over with, but Bronx residents are still waiting to go to the park. When the city approved the construction of the new Yankee Stadium, it allowed the ballclub to pave over 20.8 acres of parkland. In return, the city promised neighbors it would construct eight smaller greenspaces including public ballfields called Heritage Field as soon as the old Yankee Stadium was demolished. But "The House That Ruth Built" continues to stand, and Bronx residents still don't have much of that new parkland.

NYC Transit's Nostalgia Train is back for tonight's game. According to its Twitter feed, "World Series: 4-car vintage 1917 IRT Nostalgia Special departs Grand Central 7:15pm to 161st St. Come join the fun. Go Bombers!!"

After the NY Times looked at Yankee Stadium's cracked pedestrian ramps—some cracks are "as much as an inch wide and several feet long"—in the new $1.5 billion structure, the Department of Buildings headed to the Bronx. DOB Commissioner Robert LiMandri issued this statement, "Engineers from the Department of Buildings visited Yankee Stadium today and inspected all of the walking ramps with visual cracks. They determined that the cracks do not affect the structural stability of the ramps and do not present any safety concerns. The Yankees have told the Department that the cracks will be repaired at the end of the season."

Even though the Yankees were playing Game 3 of the ALCS in Anaheim, Yankees fans were able to watch—via Jumbotron—the matchup at Yankee Stadium yesterday. And there were some boo birds there! One fan told NY1, "Joe Girardi blew the game. He went over in the dugout and looked at the book and he took Robertson out because of something the book says. You can't manage the playoffs by the book. This loss is on Girardi's head."

If you were planning on ducking out of the office to watch Game 3 of the ALCS at a bar, you could go really hardcore by taking the train to the Bronx and watching the game at Yankee Stadium. After consulting with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., the Yankees are opening the Stadium Field Level and Great Hall to the public to watch the broadcast of the game in Anaheim, which has a start time of 4:13 p.m. (EST) with Andy Pettitte pitching for the Bronx Bombers and Jared Weaver starting for the Angels.

     

After offering the special four-car train during the ALDS, NYC Transit has brought back the Nostalgia Train (circa 1917 Lo-V cars) for the American League Championship Series between the Yankees and Angels. You board the Nostalgia Train at Grand Central at 7:15 p.m.—NYC Transit says it will arrive "at 161st Street-Yankee Stadium about 30 minutes later."

       

Victoria's Secret held the New York portion of their National Model Search at Yankee Stadium this past Saturday, and the wanna-be Angels are now popping up all over the place. There were reportedly around 2,000 who showed up (some with wings)... but no word yet on who knocked it out of the park, or if A-Rod auditioned.

The Yankees have decided to lower their seat prices from astronimical to merely ridiculous in 2010, with the best seats dropping price by up to $1,000. The most expensive Legend Suite seats behind home plate will go for "only" $1,500 in 2010, down from $2,500 this year. The stadium will also rezone part of the Legends Suite into a new Champions Suite, with tickets down to $500 from $1,000 last year. Unfortunately, Champions Suite seatholders will lose access to the duplex restaurant behind home plate.

   

Banking on the allure of New York City during the Holidays and forgetting the history of the Gotham Bowl, the Yankees announced a new bowl game this morning to be played at Yankee Stadium in 2010. The game, which will be named after a yet to be determined sponsor, will take place between Christmas and New Year’s Day, assuming the NCAA approves the game next April. The Big East and Big XII conferences will each send a team with the Big East sending it’s fourth-place squad and the Big XII sending it seventh-place squad. Under college football rules, teams must have six wins to be eligible to play in a bowl. If one of the conferences does not have a qualifying team, Notre Dame has agreed to play in the bowl, provided they are not eligible for a BCS game.

After all the talk of what a lifelong Yankee fan new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is since being named to the high court by President Obama, you had to know her throwing out the first pitch for her hometown team was an inevitability. Yesterday that finally happened with Sotomayor getting spotted (at least) fifteen feet in her throw to backup catcher Jose Molina at home plate. Below is the video of Sotomayor, elated as she often seems to be, throwing out the pretty decent toss before yesterday's battle with the Red Sox.

If the Curse of the Bambino was bestowed upon the Yankees in 1918 leading to 86 years of dominance over the Boston Red Sox, 2009 may just end up being the year the team discovered "The Magical Cream Pie" courtesy of off-season acquisition AJ Burnett. Last night Burnett dished out his 14th cream pie of the season, an honor that has been given during the postgame interview each time a Bomber has won a game for the team with a walk-off hit. Wednesday's recipient was Francisco Cervelli, the team's third-string catcher who found his way into the game after Jorge Posada was suspended for Tuesday night's bench-clearing brawl. After the game, Cervelli said, "I was waiting a long time for the pie. It tasted good...It's a moment everybody wants."

The 2009 Yankees look to be returning to the playoffs in just a couple weeks after last season's first year being left home in over a decade. This year's team has been marked by a level of extroverted charisma and fiery personalities uncharacteristic of the stoic bunch that led the turn of the century dynasty. But last night, late in a game that did not appear to be on its way toward another AJ Burnett pieface moment, some of that adrenaline appeared to turn nasty as Jorge Posada took a cheap shot shove at Blue Jays' pitcher Jesse Carlson and BAM! It was on—bench-clearing brawl, enough of a mess to end with a little blood.

       

The fifty thousand or so fans up in the Bronx who got to see Derek Jeter get hit number 2,722 certainly earned their pinstripes in order to be a part of Yankee history last night. The crowd got a little wet waiting out a 90-minute rain delay in order to see the Yankee captain surpass Lou Gehrig's 72-year record with a single on his second at-bat in the 3rd inning of last night's game against Baltimore.

The upcoming Yom Kippur sure has been a day of atonement for event planners. After an official protest from Congressman Anthony Weiner, Major League Baseball and ESPN have switched back the starting time of the final regular season Yankees-Red Sox matchup September 27th, that originally had been moved to after sundown on the high holy day so that it could reach a wider television audience. The brouhaha over the conflict comes on the heels of both the Jets and U2 having to scramble their schedules for the same reason.

     

Last night the Yankees kept their winning ways going up in The Bronx behind a couple of Bombers who are practically old timers at this point—Andy Pettite and Jorge Posada. The 37-year-old pitcher climbed to third on the team's all-time wins list with 189 (tied with Lefty Gomez) and his 38-year-old battery mate blasted a three-run homer in the first to provide Pettite with all the help he'd need to get the victory.

    

Yesterday, before their 13-6 win over the Red Sox, the Yankees honored boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Ali, in a motorized cart, circled the stadium as he was cheered by fans and as the scoreboard showed clips of his famous bouts. You can see video here.

You'll recall that the city recently agreed to pay $22,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the NYCLU on behalf of a man who says cops ejected him from Yankee Stadium last summer when he tried to use the bathroom during "God Bless America" in the seventh inning stretch. And the Yankees, as part of the settlement, affirmed that there was no policy restricting fans’ movements. So the Times checked in on Friday night's Yankee game and found that although most fans stayed in their seats during the song, one Rich Popaduke defiantly proceeded to the men's room, declaring, "Freedom is what makes us American!" Why do sports fans with full bladders hate America? A security guard, Nicole Farrell from East New York, opined, "Everybody has free choice. You cannot interfere with that." But at least one fan is here to remind us the freedom to pee freely isn't free; Sue Coster, whose brother is a Gulf war veteran, vowed retribution against anyone exiting during God Bless America: "If they tried to do that in my aisle, I would have stuck out my leg."

Two uniformed cops who ejected a Red Sox fan from Yankee Stadium last summer when he tried to use the bathroom during "God Bless America" have cost NYC taxpayers some $20,000 in settlement money. But the good news is that Yankee Stadium will now allow attendees relieve themselves during the Seventh Inning stretch! You'll recall that last August, one Brad Campeau-Laurion refused to obey an NYPD officer who ordered him back to his seat when he tried to use the bathroom as "God Bless America" played. According to Campeau-Laurion, two officers then forcefully threw him out, with one of the officers telling him to "leave the country if he didn’t like it." In the wake of 9/11, Yankee stadium began requiring spectators to remain in their seats during patriotic songs, in some cases extending chains to block the ends of the aisles. But after a lawsuit filed by the NYCLU over "enforced patriotism," a settlement was reached yesterday whereby Campeau-Laurion gets $10,001 from the city, the NYCLU gets $12,000 for legal fees, and baseball fans are granted the liberty to micturate at will.

A day after one of our commenters accused drunken, rowdy US Open golf fans as being meatheads needing to go somewhere with the Yankees out of town, in comes a video of just what some of the Yankee fans who make it out to the weekend's games in Florida were up to.

The dimensions of the new Yankee Stadium may not appear as they seem. A new report on what a hitter's park they've landed in is suggesting that the abundance of homers might simply come down to closer fences and lower walls. With over a third of their home games in the books, the early prognosis of the new stadium as a homer haven has certainly remained true. Monday night's game marked already the tenth time this season (out of 29 played there) that five or more home runs were hit. If the current pace keeps up, the team is looking at 293 balls leaving the yard this season—just ten shy of the record in Colorado's Coors Field in 1999. It's also an 83 percent increase from last year's total of 160.

Most Phish fans sneak a little grass into concerts in their underwear, but during the band's tour-opening show at Fenway Park on May 31st, Yankee fan Ian Ferris took it a step further: As payback for the Red Sox fan who tried to curse the Bronx Bombers by dropping a Sox jersey into wet concrete during construction of the new stadium, Ferris tried to seed the Fenway infield with grass seeds sold at Yankee Stadium. Once inside, Ferris, who manages a Hooters in Vermont, filled the bag of seeds with water and tossed it onto the infield. He tells the Post, "This is payback. If even one blade of grass sprouts on the field, I feel it was a success." It's important to have ambitions in life, but Gino Castignoli, the construction worker who buried the Red Sox jersey at Yankee Stadium, says Ferris's pitiful little gesture is futile: "My curse is working. It's typical of a Yankee fan to think you can buy a jinx in a bag. When will they learn, you don't win with your wallet but with your heart?" It's a safe bet that Castignoli also thinks Phish sucks, and Panic rules.

There's now a 4,769th reason to detest the new Yankee Stadium—with a players' parking area now inside the new stadium, fans lose their big window of opportunity to chase down stars and try to get an autograph. The Times described the scene as "players now drive in and out in luxury vehicles, protected from curious eyes by tinted windows." And they must have just caught players on a day when their Pharaoh's carriages were in the shop. Between the new entry setup and the luxury seats near the dugout off-limits to the rest of the stadium (even during batting practice), fans have little chance to grab a John Hancock. One fan says, “I don’t think the players realize these kids, when they’re 60 years old, remember getting that autograph. That’s how they become season-ticket holders.” Yankee spokesman Jason Zillo said the team is working to address the situation. Until then, the team offers autographed baseballs at Yankees-Steiner Collectibles ranging from $50-$2,500.

      

With the final bulldozers schlepping off the remains of Shea Stadium, it appears that they've officially paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Once upon a time, Ray Kinsella had to turn his corn field into a baseball diamond and travel across the country in search of a reclusive author to reconnect with the memories of his upbringing and come to terms with his late father. Nowadays Yankee fans simply have enter in their credit card information and are well on their way to owning an eighty-dollar tablespoon of dirt from the old stadium in order to do the same.

In Boston they have the “Green Monster.” In New York we now have “The Moat.” We have that wide concourse which separates the ridiculously expensive seats from the seats that are just expensive at the new Yankee Stadium. You are not allowed past the moat unless you pay the exorbitant prices, no exceptions. The NYU class of 2009 was not allowed past the moat and ordinary fans seeking autographs during batting practice will not be allowed past the moat.

Last weekend, the Daily News' Bill Madden published an open letter to George Steinbrenner, asking that regular ticketholders—the many ticketholders—who don't have "legend suite" tickets be allowed to observe batting practice. Because only those who paid $2,500 (or, now discounted $1,250) for the seats were allowed to hang out by the railing to see players up close and maybe get an autograph. Now, the Yankees have agreed to relax their rules, allowing fans to descend to certain sections (the left field, right field and outfield) to watch batting practice. Here are the new rules:

Remember fans, on game days, arrive early. Yankee Stadium Gates on Babe Ruth Plaza and Gates 2 and 8, open three hours prior to the start of every home game. All fans are encouraged to arrive early to enjoy batting practice and infield workouts from select areas of the Field Level and the Bleachers; specifically, all fans may watch batting practice and infield workouts from Field Level Sections 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135 and 136 and from all Bleachers Sections.

Continue reading "Yankee Stadium Allows Regular Fans To Observe Batting Practice"

             

Yesterday was the biggest day of thousands of NYU students' lives as they graduated from their respective colleges and schools, but guess what—even that isn't enough to let them sit in the seats near the field at Yankee Stadium! With Washington Square Park's renovation forcing the school to relocate its school-wide graduation ceremonies to the Bronx for a spell, the Yankees prohibited NYU from filling the premium seats with students.

In the annual affair that provides 6,000 young New Yorkers with their "only time I've ever been to the Bronx" story, NYU held its commencement ceremonies at Yankee Stadium this afternoon. After some hype that there would be a repeat streaking performance (of both last year's graduation and last night's Met game), Will Lopez will get to brag to his bros tonight that no one had the guts to do it this year.

     

After paying NYC $11.5 million for the right to auction off items, the Yankees are selling off remnants of its old stadium. Yankees COO Leon Trost said at a press conference, "We're talking about making available pairs of seats, commemorative seats, seat backs, seats from the bleachers, foul poles." Heck, there's even a chunk of freeze-dried grass for $79.99 or a 4' by 80' piece of sod from between second and third bases for $6,000.

The Yankees are so desperate to sell seats at their new stadium, they're having David Cone leave drunk dial-length messages for fans they hope to lure into buying high price tickets. Today's Post reports that the beloved Yankee pitcher is on phone duty trying to "persuade fans and corporations to spend $2,500 on luxury seats."